How to Work With PTX Files on a Mac

If you work with PTX transcript files, you already know that it can be frustrating doing so on a Mac. One of my readers, Nathan Chaney, a patent attorney in Arkadelphia, AR, developed a solution for working with PTX files on a Mac, and he has graciously agreed to share it with my readers. His guest post includes an installation guide for installing the PTX viewer on Wine and then installing a PDF printer that will work to convert the PTX files to PDF. Thanks so much to Nathan for his work in developing this solution and for sharing it with my readers.

I use the emulation program Wine to run the Windows PTX viewer from the Mac. This is a how-to guide for installing the programs necessary to (1) run the E-Transcript Viewer, and (2) save the transcripts as PDF files. It’s a little bit involved, and requires some use of the command line.

First, install XCode from the App Store. Next, we’ll need to install some command line tools. If you are running OS X 10.9 (Mavericks), open a Terminal windows (/Applications/Terminal) and run the following command:

xcode-select –install

Run the following command to agree to the XCode license (you’ll need to be an administrator of the computer and enter your password for the sudo command several times throughout this process):

sudo xcodebuild -license

If you’re running an earlier version of OS X, open the XCode application, find the “Downloads” pane, and download and install the Command Line Tools from that pane.

Next, you’ll need the Macports package installation manager, available here. Choose the version that corresponds to your operating system, and install the package. When it’s finished, run the following command to update Macports to the latest release:

sudo port -v selfupdate

We’re going to use MacPorts to install a package called CUPS-PDF. This is very similar to the “Save as PDF” feature already on your Mac. Open up the Terminal application and run this command to install CUPS-PDF:

sudo port install cups-pdf

The output of this command will give you some instructions to run upon initial setup. They are:

ln -s /opt/local/var/spool/cups-pdf/$USER ~/Desktop/cups-pdf

/opt/local/libexec/cups-pdf_links.sh

sudo killall -1 cupsd

The first command creates a shortcut to the CUPS-PDF output folder on your Desktop. You canmove this shortcut into whichever folder you prefer. The second command will require you to be an administrator and type in your password (it uses the sudo command).

The next thing to do is install the CUPS-PDF printer on your Mac. Go to System Preferences > Printers & Scanners, and click the ‘+’ below the printer list (see image at right). CUPS-PDF should appear in the ‘Default’ list.

Simply highlight CUPS-PDF, click ‘Add’, and you should have a CUPS-PDF printer in your printer list. (This will work for printing other things to PDF too — for instance, if you want to change options in the print dialog, but Save to PDF won’t let you, the CUPS-PDF printer is a good solution).

Next, we’ll use Macports to install Wine, along with a couple of packages needed to compile Wine:

sudo port install apple-gcc42 git-core wine-devel

This will likely take a while. Take an opportunity to quench the thirst all this talk about wine and port created. The next step is to install the transcript viewer, available here. Download the file, then type the following commands into your Terminal:

cd ~/Downloads

wine E-Transcript_Bundle_Viewer-6.1.1.exe

Of course, use the version number of the file you downloaded on the last command. This will open an E-Transcript Viewer installation window. Wine may need to install a few packages to make this all work; just follow the prompts to install them if so. Use the default values for installation of the E-Transcript Viewer, and complete the installation.

Finally, we’ll need to create a shortcut to the installed E-Transcript Viewer application, which is hidden. Open the TextEdit application, and click New Document. Copy and paste the following lines into the document:

Click Format > Make Plain Text. Save the file in the Applications Folder as “E-Transcript Viewer.command”. Finally, go back to the Terminal window and enter the following commands so that the script we just created can be executed:

cd /Applications

chmod +x E-Transcript\ Viewer.command

Now, you should be able to double-click the ‘E-Transcript Viewer.command’ file in the Applications folder any time you need to open a .ptx file. Here’s the result:

You should be able to select CUPS-PDF in the print dialog of the E-Tran viewer, like so:

After a few seconds, a brand-new PDF containing your transcript will appear in the folder that’s linked to your Desktop.

13 thoughts on “How to Work With PTX Files on a Mac”

We have shuttered this service after having it been free for 8 years to all users paying and free users and we feel it is now time to discontinue this service and just provide the service to customers that own our apps vs the free public. The conversion page on our site will be deleted on May 19,2014 and will not return.

If you own a Clarity Legal app, you can still convert your PTX files using the software but you will use a different page to access the free conversion.

If you really want a no-cost solution, this is fine, but it’s much easier to simply purchase CrossOver Mac. CrossOver is the paid version of Wine. It even includes the E-Transcript Bundle Viewer in its installable software list. So you can install from there without having to download it separately.

I have been using the RealLegal E-Transcript viewer with Parallels running Windows XP. I open the .ptx transcript and then save it as an ASCII file (.txt) so I can open it in OSX Word and then print it to a PDF file. This works great. It is annoying that Mac users are second-class citizens when it comes to .ptx transcripts.

Thank you for posting this, it was very helpful. I was hoping to find an easier work-around, but this worked for me. I always find small issues like to be irritating. Sometimes I think there is a conspiracy in the legal community to make things more difficult for Mac people, that or 90% of us are forced to use a PC.

Unfortunately, Yosemite broke CUPS-PDF (some sandboxing issue). You can install PDFWriter for Mac or check out VipRiser. VipRiser works like CUPS-PDF but also includes creation of Automator workflows as well as printing to Dropbox (including copying link to PDF automatically).